METAL HELL: How did the idea for CAVALERA CONSPIRACY first come about?

MAX CAVALERA: Actually it was when Igor was here in Phoenix for the Dana (tribute) show, he came over after we started speaking again & we jammed two songs, which was “Roots” & “Attitude”. It was a killer feeling on stage.  It was like the space between us had never even changed. It’s like it even made it bigger & the crowd went insane & backstage at that show I told Igor I wanna do a record.  I lied to him. I said I’ve got songs for a whole album. He said great let’s do it20& the next morning I told Gloria I’m in trouble, I don’t have one fucking song. “Inflikted” was written before but I had to write all the other songs. I told him I had it in about a week. I worked every day on some riffs & I sent him a rough copy of a CD with 10 songs, which were eventually the 10 songs that ended up being on the record.

 

MH: How would you describe the chemistry between you & Igor?

MC: I think it was really cool, obviously because it was the Dana (tribute) show & it was very meaningful; it’s a huge person in my life & Igor’s life & that’s why we played “Roots” & “Attitude”. “Attitude”, because I wrote that with Dana, & “Roots” cause it was a huge song, & everybody really connects to “Roots”. I wanna do some Nailbomb & some old Arise shit. We only had time for 2 at that time. I felt this killer connection with my brother. I’ve only had this with him. For this kind of thrash music with the fast grooves, the way Sepultura did it was with Igor, with Soulfly it’s completely different, I do something else. But this thing that people really like, this metal thing that we had, is still very much alive & the album shows that. It’s me & Igor going straight to metal & what we grew up on & what we play, so the closest thing anybody will ever get to Sepultura is the album, I’ll tell you that right now. It’s the closest thing until eventually we play together again or whatever.

 

MH: Was it intentional to go for a thrash vibe on this album or did it just come out that way?

MC: It came out that way. I’ve been talking to people & they notice 2 things, they think the album is back to the basics of metal but they also feel that the album is very new sounding in terms of sound & also has a feeling of being a contemporary record of right now. It’s not a Xeroxed copy of the old times, which is not what I wanted. To me that would not accomplish much just to do a copy of our old shit, the record is influenced by the old but it definitely comes with something new too. I think it’s really cool.

 

‘I Like To Just Get Out There & Do It Without Giving Too Much Of A Fuck’

MH: How would you compare the bands sound live to what the album sounds like? I can picture sing-alongs on stuff like “Must Kill”.

MC: Yeah, we’ve never played that (song), so I’m really anxious for the tour. We’ve been getting confirmed on some tours, like Europe festivals. America is coming up right after that in the summer. There’s some talk about the Ozzfest that I heard somewhere. I’d love to do it. Everybody knows I’m a big fan of Ozzfest. I’ve done it a lot & I love to play everywhere. Either way will be exciting. But I think to play these songs live it’s gonna turn into a monster. Some of the songs, like you said, like “Must Kill” might come out to be a killer live song that in the studio maybe is just okay, Sepultura & Nailbomb were always like that too. The songs I pictured in my head that would be the best songs live were never really the ones that ended up being good live. It’s good to go play  & the crowd tells you which ones they like the most, so it even surprises you, I think that’s great. We’re gonna play the whole album, but it’s kind of short, it’s 11 songs. We kept the album really to the point. We’ve got a Possessed cover song that we did for “The Exorcist”, but I figure we’re gonna play a lot of old shit too.20We’re gonna play Nailbomb , we’re gonna play a lot of old Sepul, maybe even some Soulfly with some “Eye For An Eye” shit in there, cause everybody still loves that. It’s gonna be a fun tour. It’s gonna be a cool metal tour to play & I’ll play the way I play, not perfect. I play with mistakes. I like to just get out there & do it without giving too much of a fuck, that’s how I do it. I think there were a lot of people from the new & old generation who were waiting to see Igor & I playing together. It should be really cool.

 

MH: It’s been a long time.

MC: To o long man (laughs). That’s 12 years or something. It’s a long ass time.

 

MH: What do you recall most about when you & Igor started playing instruments? What did you initially jam on?

MC: In Brazil, at that time when I first picked up a guitar & Igor did drums, the beginning of it was KISS & Queen. Those were the 2 things we liked & then we moved on to heavier & heavier stuff. Then we started listening to Van Halen & Motorhead. The Sex Pistols punk shit came along & then we discovered a lot of European hardcore like Discharge, which fucking changed my life. And then thrash with Destruction, Kreator, Celtic Frost, Dark Angel, Bathory; there were all these bands, I love all that stuff. I still listen to those as much as I did back then. It’s kind of funny that I started with Queen & KISS, cause they’re not real heavy bands, but it just got heavier after that.

MH: They had great songwriting too.

MC:  I always thought Queen was a really good band. Brian May is an amazing guitar player. They’re all talented musicians. They didn’t do what people told them to do, so I always thought Queen was a cool band that just did what they wanted to. Even today, I look at that attitude in a lo t of things that I do, to not do what everybody wants you to do, but do what you believe you want to do.

MH: Did coming from Brazil make it easier or harder to get signed?

MC: It think it was harder, but at the same time, there’s 2 sides of that coin, there’s one side that was harder & it had to be a test of frustration & we passed that. It was more than 10 years in the garage & what I call death metal boot camp, in Brazil, but that was good. We needed that boot camp training for the rest of our career, so I think it was good. Maybe it’s not a good thing for some bands to get signed right away. It’s good they take a long time to get signed. Then the other side of the coin is being Brazillian was actually what made a difference later on. People were talking about, from the old times people were calling us jungle boys & shit. We used to get real mad cause we’re like we’re from Sao Paulo, it’s like New York, we’ve never even been in the jungle, but people were calling us jungle boys.

 But a lot of people would check the band out just cause we are from a different part of the world & I’m proud of it. We’re the biggest thing that’s ever came out of there in music, so I think it’s cool. I have my ESP Brazilian flag guitar I play, very proud of it. I meet so many fans around the world that really dig that.

 

MH: You guys put Brazil on the map.

MC: Yeah, it was not an easy task (laughs)=2 0but it was worth it. Now I feel very proud everywhere I go. It’s not just that, because I’m not a patriotic guy at all. Actually I always tell people I’m from nowhere. I was born there but I didn’t ask to be born in Brazil. But I do see the suffering side of that country that’s really fucked up & the politics are really fucked up. People have just little things to make their life better, so little things like sports, like soccer & music, but everything else is fucked up down there. So if we did our job of brightening up the place a little bit I think we did good. That’s a good thing. All you’ve got to do is watch City Of God to figure out how Brazil is. That’s such a real movie. My friends watch that & say is it really like that & it is. So it’s getting a little taste of Brazil. Without being patriotic, cause I’m not. But I do feel proud to have been able to get out of there with music & then carry the good side of Brazil in me. Not the bad side, not the politics,20the good shit that Brazil has.

 

 

MH: It seems like metal is such a way of life there.

MC: That’s why I love metal, man. I was born metal & I’m gonna die metal, because metal is the only music to me that you breathe & live for real. Every other music says they do, but they don’t. Metal is in your blood. When I get up, I listen to metal, when I go to=2 0bed I listen to metal. Maybe I listen to other things in between. But in general metal saved my life.

 

MH: What do you remember about doing that first split album with Overdose (Bestial Devastation)?

MC:  That was an EP with 4 songs. There’s a funny thing, my son is 12, his favorite band is Napalm Death & he’s a huge grindcore fan. He discovered that EP & he’s been asking me to play “Necromancer”, which is one of the songs on that, & I’m really into doing it. I called my brother Igor & told him about it, so on the Conspiracy tour we’re gonna probably play “Necromancer” & maybe “Bestial Devastation”, the title track. I like that song a lot & the next LP I like a lot too, Morbid Visions, although the album is out of tune. I didn’t know about tuning so I recorded all my guitars out of tune at that time. It’s still cool as hell. It’s even cooler cause it is out of tune. That’s such a punk rock thing, but the songs are good, like “Troops Of Doom” & “War” & “Mayhem”. They’re cool songs. I’d love to do it because out of that era, when I was in Sepultura we did “Troops Of Doom” a lot. It was a lot of people’s favorite song. I did “Antichrist”, I changed it to “Anticop”.  I was having a lot of problems with police so I changed it to “Anti-cop”, that’s about it. We didn’t do anything else out of those records. So it would be cool to go back & replay some of those older songs that we never got to play too much. I get excited just thinking about it. When I talked to Igor about that he’s like that’s crazy, we’re gonna ac tually play something like “Necromancer”. We have to actually re-learn the song cause it’s been so many years, but it’s gonna be hella fun to do it. It should be a good tour. I also like to do some cover songs. We had a huge list in the studio of what we wanted to do. I wanted to do Dark Angel “Darkness Descends”. We ended up choosing Possessed. There are so many songs I wanted to do. There was some old Suicidal Tendencies that I wanted to do, like “War Inside My Head”. So we’re probably gonna do a lot of covers too. It’ll be a cool show to go see cause it’s gonna be very unconventional, not typical. If you go see Soulfly you know you’re gonna hear the songs from the albums, so this Conspiracy tour should be more fun because we’re not gonna follow the routine. We’re gonna do different things.

MH: Are you still playing on 4 strings?

MC: Hell yeah man! Everything is on 4 strings, the whole album. I play 6 strings sometimes for fun, just to jam at my house. When it comes to writing riffs I love 4 strings. What I like about it is that it’s limited so you reall y have to be creative with your riffs so you can make them work on 4 strings. To me it’s a simple way to become a better riff-guitar player.

MH: Marc Rizzo did a killer job too.

MC: Yeah, Rizzo is great man! I’ve seen his development form Prophecy to Dark Ages, to Conspiracy & now the new Soulfly, which is already recorded. We finished last year & it’s gonna blow some people’s minds too. Marc is on fire. He’s taking his guitar playing to the next level so I’m very happy that I found him & he’s such a good force20in Soulfly right now.

MH: How did you decide on getting Joe Duplantier to play bass?

MC: I like Gojira a lot. I think he did a great job on the album. Although he’s not a bass player, he’s a guitar player, but he nailed the bass down. We had a little help from Rex from Pantera & Down too. He did one song. Overall it was a cool team in the studio. Me, Marc, Igor & Joe just seemed to be in tune with each other & had a good chemistry. There was no rock star vibes. There were no egos. Everybody was there to jam & to fuck shit up & make a good record & we did that. We did a video for “Sanctuary” & we’re just waiting to go on tour. I can’t wait to play.

MH: How do you feel about the current thrash resurgence?

MC: There’s an Earache compilation (Thrashing Like A Maniac) that I like a lot. One of the bands is Warbringer. They were my favorite. I think it’s great. I’ve always said that time of music; to me was probably one of the best times for metal. You had albums like Arise & Reign In Blood, Hell Awaits, Bonded By Blood, Morbid Tales. The list is endless. The factory of thrash was huge. All those bands were good & I also think they were doing it like that cause they loved the music, not because it was on the radio, cause they were not on the radio & they were not anywhere else. The only place we could get anywhere at that time was some fanzines & magazines here & there. But that was it & it still never stopped anybody. They kept doing it so I think it was really cool. I’m glad that a lot of bands are doing more of that stuff now, that’s awesome.

 

MC:  Big time! I was listening to Bonded By Blood the other day & it’s so good. I’m glad to see a lot of these bands still playing, like Exodus & Testament. I even heard Carcass is gonna be on tour in Europe. I can’t wait to see it. They’re one of my favorite bands. Napalm Death is one of my favorite bands. Metal is definitely alive & doing good.

MH: What would you attribute to the fact that you’re still doing thrashy stuff while bands like Metallica changed their style’?

MC: I don’t know, man, I cut my hair for Ride The Lightning. I had long hair & wanted that record so bad. My cousin was a bastard. He wanted to get me on the right path, so he wanted to cut my hair. I remember I cut my hair & I got Ride The Lightning & I looked at him & said I’m gonna tell you something, my hair is gonna grow back & I said it doesn’t even matter much cause if hair was good it wouldn’t grow on your ass (laughs) & he’s like you crazy mother fucker! But I got a Ride The Lightning copy man! So I still love those albums, I can’t talk about what the bands do now. I think bands change too & sometimes it’s like what they wanna do. Everybody has the right to do what they want do. There’s a lot of music out there, but I definitely love that whole thrash phase.

 

MH: Have you heard the Hellhammer demo CD yet? (Demon Entrails)

MC: I’m supposed to get it this week sometime. I was in Europe & they were talking about it. I love Apocalyptic Raids, that’s still definitely one of my favorite 10 metal albums of all time.

·          SEPULTURA – Bestial Devastation – Split CD w. Overdose – 1985

·          SEPULTURA – Morbid Visions – 1986

·          SEPULTURA – Schizophrenia - 1987

·          SEPULTURA – Beneath The Remains - 1989

·          SEPULTURA – Arise - 1991

·          SEPULTURA – Chaos A.D. – 1993

·          NAILBOMB – Point Blank – 1994

·          NAILBOMB – Proud To Commit Commercial Suicide-live - 1995

·          SEPULTURA – Roots - 1996

·          SEPULTURA – Blood Rooted – 1997

·          SOULFLY – Soulfly – 1998

·          SOULFLY – Primitive – 2000

·          SOULFLY – 3 - 2002

·          SEPULTURA – Under A Pale Grey Sky-Live  - 2002

·          SEPULTURA – Chaos DVD – 3 home videos re-issued; UNDER SIEGE (1992), THIRD WORLD CHAOS (1995) & WE ARE WHAT WE ARE (1997) - 2002

·          SOULFLY – Prophecy – 2004

·          NAILBOMB – Live At Dynamo –DVD-2005 SEPULTURA – Roots (25th RR-2 CD) - 2005

·          SOULFLY – The Song Remains Insane DVD– 2005

·          SOULFLY – Dark Ages - 2005

·          SEPULTURA – The Best Of - 2006

·          CAVALERA CONSPIRACY – Inflikted-2008

·          SOULFLY – Conquer - 2008